The leaving of a place is an odd thing. One day you are a fixture in the room of your place, like a grandfather clock regularly chiming upon the hour. And the next, you are gone, as if replaced by a newer design.

Three weeks ago, we packed up and exited the house we had called home for more than seven years. It was the house that first beckoned to me because of its big windows, its eyes upon the houses, trees, and sidewalk around it, the late morning sunlight casting its rays upon the scuffed up pine wood floors. Built somewhere between 1890 and 1900, the place had its crooked angles, for sure. These were things we grew both to hate and love over the years— the way those two floorboards buckled in the middle of the dining room, the way each stair creaked as you descended them in the hush of the morning, the scuff marks on the walls that left a history of each piece of furniture had been pushed against it too many times.

It may have been the home with crooked angles, but it was the place where all of our children were born, or were brought home. Where the fire was lit on the third floor carpet, and two penitent little ones confessed their crime. Where two long-term guests and a homeless family shared our space for some passage of time. Where a black cat found his afternoon reverie on the warm spot in the South-facing sitting room. Where spills and squabbles and sorted out emotions all took their place.  

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